The Fire Island Ferries are looking for new blood. The captains of the 26 ferries, which run from Bay Shore on Long Island across Great South Bay to the resort communities on Fire Island on the Atlantic, are aging out, and they’re having trouble finding replacements.
“We’re finding very few millennials interested in doing this kind of work,” Luke Kaufman, operations manager for Fire Island Ferries, told The New York Times. “The iPhone is the new torque wrench. We’re trying our darnedest to find replacements, but they’re just not there.”
The ferries are busiest during the summer, when they make 30-minute runs during the day and into the night, navigating the shallows of the bay and often dealing with vacationers who’ve had too much to drink. “It’s a whole other job after dark,” Dave Anderson, the ferry company’s general manager, told The Times. “It’s a drinking crowd, and when someone dares his friend to jump of the boat, it’s the captain’s job to go and rescue that guy.”
In the off season, captains often work in the boatyards, hauling the ferries, welding, painting and working in an engine shop with a sign on the wall that reads, “QUITCHERBELLYAKIN!” Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/nyregion/fire-island-ferry-captain-retirement.html
